Around 320,000 people sign up to new mobile payment service

Some 320,000 Brits have signed up to use Paym, a new service which will allow people to transfer money using just a mobile phone number.

According to telegraph.co.uk, the registration for the service only opened three weeks ago. Essentially, Paym does away with the need for bank account number or sort code when sending small amounts of money to others. All customers need to do is register their mobile phone number to their bank account, then they can pay their bills or any money they owe to a friend using the recipients number.

Around 30 million people are eligible to sign up to Paym, meaning only one per cent have registered so far. Neil Aitken of the Payments Council, which is managing the service, comments on this, saying:

“We think it is a really encouraging start. You cannot use it to send a payment yet so we are happy that so many people have signed up before the service goes live.”

Paym launches tomorrow (April 29), reports ft.com. From then, customers of Santander, Cumberland Building Society, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and Danske Bank can use the service. Later this year, Paym will expand to cover nine out of ten current accounts.